Tendenze universali e spiegazioni particolari: il caso della complessità e del sistema di allineamento

This work aims at analyzing the correlation between morphological complexity and semantic alignment systems. Firstly, taking into account typological data gathered from the WALS database and various grammatical descriptions, the crosslinguistic pervasiveness of the phenomenon is highlighted. Secondly, the correlation between morphological complexity and alignment systems is explained by means of a) a diachronic and b) a cognitive explanation. As for a), the emergence of a semantic alignment system can be promoted by structural features, commonly attested in polysynthetic languages (i.e. noun incorporation and person indexation on the verb). As for b), the preference for a specific functional principle (iconicity versus economy) can determine both the argument coding and the morphological structures.